


Always Work with You

by dramate



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Star Wars: The Old Republic - Shadow of Revan, mentions of past mind control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramate/pseuds/dramate
Summary: Theron wakes up, bright and early, with a headache pounding away behind his left eye. He’s not really sure if it’s the lovely parting gift he got of bruises on his bruises from Revan and his torture goons or the late night spent, y’know, trying to avoid getting metaphysically eaten by an ancient, evil Sith spirit and angsting over the whole grab-bag of reasons he really shouldn’t have kissed an Imp. The usual.Well… Besides the Imp thing. That one is new.
Relationships: Male Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine/Theron Shan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 55





	Always Work with You

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been on my computer for actual years. Figured now was as good a time as any to post it. Hope it brings a smile!

Theron wakes up, bright and early, with a headache pounding away behind his left eye. He’s not really sure if it’s the lovely parting gift he got of bruises on his bruises from Revan and his torture goons or the late night spent, y’know, trying to avoid getting metaphysically eaten by an ancient, evil Sith spirit and angsting over the whole grab-bag of reasons he _really_ shouldn’t have kissed an Imp. The usual.

Well… Besides the Imp thing. That one is new.

Theron’s terrible taste and timing in romantic interests, though? Still very much the usual, apparently. Not that Cipher Nine actually strikes him as a _bad guy_. Which… okay, maybe a career in SIS ever so slight skews the definition of ‘ _not a_ _bad guy_ ’ from the usual ’ _Does the laundry and balks at the idea of hurting people_ ’ more to ‘ _Has not actively put a knife in someone just for kicks and giggles_.’

That’s… actually a distressingly low bar, now that he thinks about it. So he resolves to just gloss right on over that one for the time being and devotes himself to getting dressed, finding the nearest source of caf, and dragging himself out to the combined coalition camp for yet another terribly awkward day on this extended mission, which is starting to feel a little too close to ‘mother-son camping trip’ than he’s really all that comfortable with.

He’s halfway through pulling on his socks and boots when he notices it. Penned, in detail against his heel, is a little, meticulously detailed drawing of a creature with _way_ too many eyes staring up at him. He snorts, not even the least bit surprised, as he watches the thing start to fade. He’s had over two decades of this kind of thing, after all, so he spares just a minute to snatch a marker with some gaudy logo of a company that’s only managed to stay in business producing old-school ink by virtue of catering to the soulmate market.

This one’s a truly awful shade of neon green he’d grabbed on Rishi from some peddler who wanted way too much for it. It was something of a joke running around SIS circles—Theron Shan, with his soulmate who speaks a language that isn’t charted in the known galaxy, and his last-minute purchases of gaudy-colored, cheap markers he inevitably loses in a day or two.

(Really, he’d rather it be a joke. Jokes are easier to handle than just another tally of shitty things the Force has handed, or refused to hand, Theron—including a soulmate who presumably lived in the same galaxy.)

It’s fine though. They get by with this game of ‘find the picture.’ That his soulmate is apparently discrete about where they hide the pictures is at least something Theron can be grateful for. Even if he’s long since given up finding them—probably for the best, given how his attempts at relationships with civilians have gone in the past—it’s still… kind of nice, really. Just knowing there’s someone out there who dedicates enough time out of their day to sketch little surprises on their own skin for Theron to find on his.

Not that he paid attention to them at first. Not at twelve, with all the wisdom of that age deciding that ‘ _soulmate’_ sounded more like ‘ _Padawan trial_ ,’ and if he could just avoid paying any attention to that kind of attachment, the Force would finally open up and let him sense it. Then he could go about his business being a _good_ Jedi that the Order—and Master Satele—could be proud of.

That dream went down pretty quick though. He’d finally responded that night, alone and holed up in the back of some dingy, rented room while he waited on someone to come pick him up and take him off to whatever came next.

(He doesn’t call it the darkest days of his life because, one, that sounds melodramatic, and, two, he’s a lot better at avoiding his feelings with work and caf than working through his whole grab-bag of parental abandonment issues.)

So Theron finally wrote back. In Basic. Which, it turned out, his soulmate clearly didn’t speak. One thing lead to another, and then there had been a simplified, humanoid frowny face glaring at Theron from the back of his hand. At sixteen, freshly kicked out of the Jedi Order without a word of protest from his mother and at the lowest of his lows, faced with that one, he’d laughed until he cried.

He’d responded in the morning with an unflattering picture of a bantha’s backside that he knows would’ve been a lot funnier if he’d ever learned how to draw well enough to make it look like anything other than a mess of squiggles. By afternoon there was something that looked like a confused humanoid caricature sitting next to where the bantha-squiggle had been, and the world somehow seemed a little less unbearable.

Somehow that one escalated over the years to the hide-and-seek with pictures. Which, incidentally, is how he’d figured out that his soulmate is both ambidextrous and fairly flexible. And that er… definitely hadn’t been included in any teenage daydreaming, thanks.

It was mostly harmless fun. A good way to shut down for a minute and focus on something stupid. But then there were… moments.

Theron remembers the day he woke up a few years ago in the middle of the night to find a picture of a silhouette strung up like a puppet on strings with an eerie smile grinning out from the negative space of his shin. The months after that one were… bad. Terrifying in a way Theron hadn’t realized anything related to some random person he only talked to through picture could be. Broken figures. Nightmarish monsters. Surreal stuff. Things Theron saw from broken prisoners and the torture victims they sometimes managed to bargain back from the Sith.

Those months? He tried everything from buying stencils to make his pictures actually recognizable to trying Basic again one night, half-panicked after a week of radio silence. (“Tell me where you are. I can help.”) There’d been nothing for three tense hours that Theron spent only half-looking at the readout from his computer.

Then _“Of course it was Basic.”_

In Basic. Neat letters but off a bit. Clearly a second language but with a good enough grasp to get how to make sarcasm come across in writing.

They never really talked much, even with the common language now. Neither of them even hinted at identifying details or a meeting place. Theron guesses, for his part, it’s more of a habit and the nature of having a spy for a soulmate: there’s information he can’t actually pass on, after all. Part of that is his name, location, and occupation. Maybe it’s pretty telling that his soulmate maintains the same air of polite distance on the details. 

So, yeah. Even now, with this tense alliance between Republic and Empire, Theron still takes a few minutes to find a picture of a weird looking bug crawling up his ankle and try his hand at sending back a butchered version of the glare Lana reserves just for Master Satele. The one that’s _almost_ got him considering dropping some of the hurt.

His hand still, and, for a moment, he honestly thinks about sending a quick _“Hey, so I know we don’t talk about Stuff much, but… Just don’t come to Yavin IV, okay?”_ instead.

He doesn’t. He wants to, but he doesn’t. Even if his soulmate is safe for now, they won’t be for long. Not if they fail here.

Besides, he’s got enough to worry about with the whole… _Cipher Nine_ thing and how unfair it is for someone who’s going to be the enemy again as soon as this is over to be so damn attractive when he’s just skirting the edge of sassing Darth Marr and Grandmaster Satele alike with a confidence that says _‘I may not have the Force, but I have enough that you want that you won’t lay a finger on me.’_

“Theron?”

He glances at Cipher Nine and those red eyes of his. Sure, without visible pupils, so it’s always a bit harder to read what Cipher Nine is thinking, even when he isn’t playing a character, but Theron thinks he’s getting the hang of it after Rishi. Probably doesn’t hurt that he’s been through roughly the same training, just less… Imperial.

“Sorry. Got on a bad signal,” Theron lies with a sly grin, “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Cipher Nine glances up from where he’s crouched next to the relay sensor just to make sure Theron sees his skepticism. Theron has to hand it to him, he’s a little less imperious, for lack of a less charged word, than a lot of Chiss he’s met. Not that he’s actually met a lot to begin with, but still. “Really? Your eyes didn’t move.”

Theron blinks, “What?”

“When you’re focusing on the readout from your implants,” Cipher Nine says, just a hint of his original accent slipping in under that posh Imperial one while those nimble fingers of his slide between the wiring, “your eyes move. Slightly. Compensation, I think, for the neural pathway your implants use.”

Theron snorts, “And your accent’s slipping.”

There’s enough of a smile on Cipher Nine’s face that Theron sees the edge of it when he turns his head back down to keep working. Theron turns half his focus back to making sure the readouts keep looping back through all-clear signs to keep the sensor from tipping their enemies off that there’s an Imperial cipher wrist deep in its hardware. This is the first of three they have to re-wire before nightfall after all.

“Is it?” Cipher Nine counters. And, yeah, that’s a pretty flawless transition to a new accent. It’s just a little too close to Theron’s for comfort. “I suppose it did, didn’t it?”

“Marr pay you for the sass, or do you charge extra for that?” Theron asks dryly. He kind of likes this game though. It’s not the first time they’ve picked at the tells no one else besides Lana would really catch, much less call out.

(He doesn’t really like to think about how it reminds him of the weird-looking spider-looking thing his soulmate had drawn that morning. Apparently his soulmate’s sense of humor is about as bad as Cipher Nine’s, too.)

“I charge by the quip, actually. I’ve been meaning to negotiate with Master Satele since we are technically in an alliance for the moment,” Cipher Nine says, dry as Tatooine.

Theron winces, because he tries to actively avoid thinking about the awkward family reunion waiting for him back at camp. He’s pretty sure their cozy mother-son relationship means he really shouldn’t feel like a teenager caught trying to get into somebody’s pants when he’s a grown man who just so happened to have kissed an Imperial before they left for this crazy moon.

Which… He tries not to flush because he’s a grown man who has kissed a lot of people over the years, thank you, so there’s really no actual reason to get flustered over this one guy.

Too bad he never really learned that trick of self-control before he got booted out of the Jedi Temple.

Cipher Nine tips his head back up and glances over his face. Naturally, that’s the second it takes Theron to remember that little bit of intelligence that claimed Chiss can see a bit into the infrared. Which, apparently, Theron can now confirm because that’s definitely Cipher Nine’s smug face.

Theron cups a hand over his mouth and clears his throat. Pointedly. “Somehow Kothe didn’t mention you having this much fun in the field.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Theron knows the second Cipher Nine’s face slides fluidly into soft amusement. The thing Theron’s picked up on in their months fighting together? Anything that looks natural on Cipher Nine’s face isn’t real. It’s the awkward, small, stilted things that are closest to the person hiding under that Imperial code name.

“Jedi are sorely lacking in any sense of humor short of dramatic irony,” the Chiss says. The tone, Theron adjusts from the seeming amusement it’s wrapped up in to the grimness that apparently sits under it. He doesn’t really know what happened between Kothe and Cipher Nine, but… he’d gotten the feeling it wasn’t exactly good from the way Kothe, a former Jedi and current SIS commander, had actually let the guilt wash over his face when Theron asked for his evaluation on Cipher Nine during his supposed defection.

Theron stares at the dark blue hair on the back of Cipher Nine’s neck for just a second, then turns his eyes back to his datapad for another cycle. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he mutters sarcastically, surprising even himself really. He doesn’t… talk about his connection with the Jedi and especially not his mother, but…

But this isn’t the first time with Cipher Nine. It’s… not a comfortable thought for more reasons than one. He’s never really slipped this bad just because he’s been attracted to someone before. _Especially_ not an Imp.

“I drew a krykna hatchling on my foot for my soulmate this morning to celebrate the third anniversary of Kaliyo nearly getting us eaten by a swarm of them.”

Theron likes to think he’s pretty damn good at his job, thanks, so he knows for a fact that Cipher Nine is digging for something with that out-of-hyperspace line. Thing is, he doesn’t even get it until a quick scan of the holonet with his implants shows him what, exactly, a krykna is.

Spider. It’s a giant spider. Cipher Nine drew a spider on his soulmate’s foot this morning.

Cipher Nine’s soulmate.

Who is Theron, because there’s still a fading picture of a thing with too many eyes on his ankle.

Oh.

 _Oh_. 

And he’s being watched. At least it’s with one of those stilted, guarded expressions that means that Cipher isn’t actually playing around. Theron very carefully turns his eyes back to his datapad and uses every Jedi trick in the book to keep his face mostly neutral. “Uh huh... So you thought ‘hey, what better way to set this reveal up than draw a spider’? Hate to break it to you, but those supposedly legendary cipher agent seduction skills of yours? They need some work.” He gives it a second while that sinks in and sets a new data loop, then sighs. “I’d ask you how you figured it out, but you Chiss have a thing for knowing everything first, don’t you?”

Okay, so that little snort is actually… disturbingly adorable, and Theron is absolutely okay with the idea of never hearing it again after this Emperor-killing alliance thing is over with. He’s not at all reeling with the fact that his _soulmate is right there_ and that _he has kissed his soulmate_. Nope. Just fine, thanks.

“Only things that matter,” Cipher Nine replies. And it’s soft. Softer than anything Theron has heard him say. “Forget it if you like, but I thought I should thank you in person if I was right.”

Oh, Theron doesn’t have to ask what he’s being thanked for. Not with the new pieces of information suddenly reordering themselves: Cipher’s reaction to Kothe’s name, his soulmate’s twisted sketches, and the fact that most of Kothe’s file on the guy is almost completely redacted.

Theron doesn’t say any of those things though. Doesn’t even mention how the thought doesn’t even bother him that the man who is probably the enemy’s sharpest spy has a direct line to Theron--has had it for years--just to use it to draw random things that catch his eye. Instead, he goes for, “No, see, I’m pretty sure if you were going for ‘unforgettable,’ a spider is probably enough to make a guy stop and take notice.”

Theron actually sees Cipher Nine’s throat work as he swallows. There’s a complicated look on the bit of his face Theron can see, but it eases off pretty quickly. He stands up and brushes the grease off of his hands onto his pants. The look on his face is the same one Theron sees every day when Cipher shuts down arguments between Marr and Satele at camp—like whatever is going on in that head of his as he approaches Theron is just as important as stopping the emperor.

Theron lets him move well within his space. The smooth skin of his cheek is just a bit cooler than a human’s as one gloved hand settles on his shoulder while the other lightly grips Theron’s hip. There’s a distinct but quiet murmur, and Theron’s eyes widen. “…That’s…?”

The Chiss is smirking when he pulls back, but it’s tiny and pulled tight with a bit of wariness at the corners of his eyes. “If you’re going to insult my romantic overtures,” he says, snatching the datapad from Theron’s numb fingers, “you should at least use my name.”

...Theron is reasonably sure he could buy a small, private star system with the money more than one person would pay for that one name—not to mention how easy that could buy his way right back into the good graces of the SIS indefinitely. That’s not really the point though because Theron already knows he’s not even touching either of those thoughts again. The point is…

That’s… That’s trust there. And trust is real. A lot more real than a quick, fun fumble with the enemy while the temporary peace lasts.

And Theron? Theron has no idea what to do with that.

“For your information, I figured it out when your datapad glitched yesterday, and you wrote the coordinates to the base rendezvous on the back of your hand.” That comment jars Theron out of that little revelation just soon enough to realize his companion is already halfway back to the speeder bike they left parked nearby. The Chiss glances over his shoulder with a smug, mischievous grin, “Talk about poor romantic overtures. Always business with you, isn’t it?”

Theron starts and pretends he doesn’t half-stumble over a tree root on his rush to catch up.

He _really_ needs to get better taste in men.


End file.
